A lot could be said about this question, but in practical terms mainly chopped and screwed muzak and corporate jingles from the 80s and 90s. Also heavily slowed down and VHS noise and/or lofi-ness added to make it sound like crap. Lots of nauseating 90s colour palettes and fake nostalgic imagery.

As you can imagine, a lot of it is hideous, but for some reason feels really good to listen to in the way that listening to breakore feels good to listen to.

A lot could be said about this question, but in practical terms mainly chopped and screwed muzak and corporate jingles from the 80s and 90s. Also heavily slowed down and VHS noise and/or lofi-ness added to make it sound like crap. Lots of nauseating 90s colour palettes and fake nostalgic imagery.

As you can imagine, a lot of it is hideous, but for some reason feels really good to listen to in the way that listening to breakore feels good to listen to.

Edit - It's not letting me quote T-2000 guy's post and count it as an edit so I'm putting it here as context because fuck it

I feel like that's actually kind of an unfair example of what vaporwave is, honestly. The "genre" (I'd call it more like a sonic aesthetic than anything) can be a lot of things besides the slowed down Diana Ross songs it started as. I can't post links yet because I'm a newer user, but I'll leave a list of some songs that are worth listening to here, if you even really want to.

The thing about vaporwave is that there overall seems to be almost no real consensus on what the fuck it is. There are artists who make songs that are sampled-based, in your face styles of funk, artists who make completely synth-based ambient music, and artists who make experimental, plunderphonics styles that sound kind of like a more layered and fast paced version of Oneohtrix Point Never's album Replica. There's even at least one artist who use nothing but traditional instruments he records himself.

The only thing I can really seem to find that's just barely constant in the "genre" is the use of a sort of airy and at least to some extent lo-fi sound that seems to usually be for the purpose of giving a nostalgic sound, as if it's something you'd hear as the background music to one of those old experimental 3D animations from the 90s like the Mind's Eye series. So with that in mind I don't really see a reason to call it a "genre" which implies a concrete sound being present in the whole thing. To me, it's just an aesthetic the same way the visual art in most of it is. I hope that makes more sense.

The thing about vaporwave is that there overall seems to be almost no real consensus on what the fuck it is. There are artists who make songs that are sampled-based, in your face styles of funk, artists who make completely synth-based ambient music, and artists who make experimental, plunderphonics styles that sound kind of like a more layered and fast paced version of Oneohtrix Point Never's album Replica. There's even at least one artist who use nothing but traditional instruments he records himself.

The only thing I can really seem to find that's just barely constant in the "genre" is the use of a sort of airy and at least to some extent lo-fi sound that seems to usually be for the purpose of giving a nostalgic sound, as if it's something you'd hear as the background music to one of those old experimental 3D animations from the 90s like the Mind's Eye series. So with that in mind I don't really see a reason to call it a "genre" which implies a concrete sound being present in the whole thing. To me, it's just an aesthetic the same way the visual art in most of it is. I hope that makes more sense.

i just dont get your use of the word aesthetic tbh man. surely musical genres are groups/categories that sort music based roughly on the aesthetical properties of music. its like youre saying its not really a genre of music its more of a style of music i get that 'aesthetic' is a word used a lot in vaporwave circles or whatever but from my distant and extremely limited understanding of that it seems to be a misuse of it on purpose. anywayyyy maybe if the sound varies a lot its less of a genre and more of a scene that people relate to and/or participate in? who knowsssss. im going down a very tedious path towards pointless garden:badger:

i just dont get your use of the word aesthetic tbh man. surely musical genres are groups/categories that sort music based roughly on the aesthetical properties of music. its like youre saying its not really a genre of music its more of a style of music i get that 'aesthetic' is a word used a lot in vaporwave circles or whatever but from my distant and extremely limited understanding of that it seems to be a misuse of it on purpose. anywayyyy maybe if the sound varies a lot its less of a genre and more of a scene that people relate to and/or participate in? who knowsssss. im going down a very tedious path towards pointless garden:badger:

Perhaps the steam-punk world is a good comparison. From what I can see the Vaporwave people are a little more music-centric, but there is a lot of imagery, blogs of only imagery etc.

Kvlt O))): sorry for hi-jacking the thread. Lots of good tricks in these tutorials.